Ok i was going to buy the dell xps 435mt for 999 from costco. But i keep running in circles trying to make my decision so if you guys could help me it would be much appreciated. Im thinking of building two computers. My question is should i not build two computers. This is what i want to be able to do. Im ripping all my dvds to mybooks and or hard drives. I have a 65 inch mitsubishi diamond 1080p tv that i run my computer ps3 and xbox 360 through. I want to get the best possible video output from my computer to my tv to watch my dvd collection and maybe in the future blu ray collection. Also i want to end up getting a surround sound for the setup too and am not sure if it is better to run this all through a media pc or a reciever? Now also with the pc i want to be able to do some video editting on it because i play semi pro football and coach football and im very interested in starting to take video from games and make highlight tapes and what not. I have always wanted to get into video editing as a hobby. Thats why im not sure if i should build one computer for the media and one for the video editing and web browsing. I dont really play computer gms so if there is a difference in video cards from gaming and video editing then i would def. not care to sacrafice gaming for video editing. My budget is about a 1000 but one of the reasons im posting is because im thinking im going to go overkill and dont really need as much as i would end up getting without your guys help. If you need anymore info ask and ill post as soon as possible. Im also trying to use this thread as a start to learning about video editing and theater pcs. thanks.
1.) You cannot run a PS3 through a PC unless you bought a HDCP DVI capture card before they were outlawed. 2.) If your TV has three DVI or HDMI ports (total of three, it can be a mix), then you don't need a reciever except for the surround sound. 3.) The PS3 can be used as your ripped DVD player by one of the following methods: setup a computer as a media server, load the DVDs onto USB hard drives, or get the ESATA adapter with an ESATA raid controler and a few sata driver attached to it. 4.) The Xbox360 can be used with windows media center's library or with external USB hard drives. 5.) For options 3 & 4, you will have to rip the movie itself as an MPEG file. 6.) Not much use for two computers with only one display, a quad core with a good amount of ram will do more than enough. 7.) Video editing & blu rays do not need as much video as games, an old 3870 would be overkill. 8.) If you want to learn about video editing, there is a section of afterdawn dedicated to it; read some of the posts in there. 9.) If you want to rip all your DVDs to your PC, you are better off building your own with a nice big RAID array...expect about 125-180 DVDs per TB. You can also rip Blu-Ray movies, but they take up a lot more space...expect 25-40 blu rays per TB.
Agreed. No point in buying two PC's when you already have a HTPC with your consoles. The consoles will also behave better with surround sound than PCs typically do. With a budget of 1000 USD you could possibly look at building an i7 rig which for video editing would be quite useful for you.
Thanks for the reply guys. Im going to read about raid configurations i know there is like raid 1 5 0 or something like that so i want to learn about the differences. Maybe i will try to have a big tower that i store all the different hard drives in and then have the computer next to it that it is attached to?
RAID 0 = 2 or more drives with no redundancy...provides space and speed. RAID 1 = Reliability, but the space and speed of 1 drive RAID 5 = capacity and reliability, but very slow with most cheap raid controlers RAID 10 = like doing raid 0 with a pair of raid 1 arrays RAID 50 = capacity, reliability, and speed If you need to build a big RAID array, you will not have money for an I7, but I can say from personal experience that a first-gen Phenom does video editing just fine...so there is no need for I7.
Midsize towers can fit a fair number of drives in them, my case can hold 6 hard drives so a full tower is probably a needless expense for you. You don't seem like you're going to become completely obsessed with editing so although i7's are absolute beasts, a phenom or Core2 will suit you well. Especially if you end up doing a bit of overclocking. You also have to decide whether to go with a dual or quad core chip. This is easy to decide once you know if the software you are going to edit with can take advantage of 4 cores. For the same price point a quad will have a slower clock speed but be able to do more work if the software takes advantage of it. Otherwise you're better off with 2 higher clocked cores.
Do yourself a favor and do not buy or learn any software that is still dual-core only as it is already obsolite. Get yourself a quad core chip and some software that supports it. When looking for a case, you might want to consider a rack mount case. They typicaly have more room for large RAID arrays, and they are usualy a lot cheaper than a similar sized "media center" or HTPC case (mine has room for 12 hard drives and it only cost $80, and it is of the same material quality as most $400 HTPC cases I have seen)...plus they are the same width as most receivers, so they look nice in your stack.
Thanks for the replies guys i really appreciate it. Well money wise im doing pretty good these days so i ended up buying a barebones kit from compusa. Intel i7 920, 2-6gb sticks of Corsair 1600 ddr3 Ram, 1.5TB Seagate Sata 2 HD, Corsair 750 Watt PSU, and a Tempest Nzxt Case. Now i just need to chose a video card and operating system. My buddy was telling me windows Seven is really nice. What do you guys think Windows Seven or Vista Ultimate 64?
hey killerbug im about to buy this video card to add to the setup what do you think? Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB DDR4 2DVI/HDCP PCI-Express Video Card, Lite Retail
